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by Emily Everett
A taut and lyrical coming-of-age debut about a young American woman navigating class, lies, and love amid London's jet-set elite.
I would arrive, blank like a sheet of notebook paper, and write myself new.
Anna first fell in love with London at her hometown library—its Jane Austen balls a far cry from her life of food stamps and hand-me-downs. But when she finally arrives after college, the real London is a moldy flat and the same paycheck-to-paycheck grind—that fairy-tale life still out of reach.
Then Anna meets the Wilders, who fly her to Saint-Tropez to tutor their teenage daughter. Swept up by the sphinxlike elder sister, Anna soon finds herself plunged into a heady whirlpool of parties and excess, a place where confidence is a birthright. There she meets two handsome young men—one who wants to whisk her into his world in a chauffeured car, the other who sees through Anna's struggle to outrun her past. It's like she's stepped into the pages of a glittering new novel, but what will it cost her to play the part?
Sparkling with intelligence and insight, All That Life Can Afford peels back the glossy layers of class and privilege, exploring what it means to create a new life for yourself that still honors the one you've left behind.
"Everett debuts with an exquisite retelling of Pride and Prejudice, about an American tutor in contemporary Europe…Much of the deceptively breezy narrative unfolds against a backdrop of lush scenery and lavish dinners and parties. Along the way, Everett sharply conveys Anna's acute and sometimes self-destructive longing for acceptance. This erudite romance is deeply satisfying." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Allowing for grand mistakes and equally impressive repairing of relationships, readers will feel as if they've been given new insights into how to gain self-awareness and comfort in their own journeys. A must read for Janeites or fans of Marian Keyes, Helen Fielding, Sophie Kineslla, or Jane Green." —Booklist (starred review)
"All That Life Can Afford absolutely sparkles. It's somehow completely romantic even as it plays with the conventions of romance; it's luminous while questioning luminousness; and it's a book with the tenderness of grief at its heart. Emily Everett is a massive talent. I can't wait to read more." —Catherine Newman, New York Times bestselling author of Sandwich and We All Want Impossible Things
"Emily Everett's All That Life Can Afford is a wildly entertaining fish-out-of-water story meets Cinderella fairy tale. Readers will eagerly swim along as her American heroine, Anna, navigates the tempestuous waves and powerful undercurrents of the British upper crust. An effervescent debut chock full of Austenian nods. Swoonworthy!" —Sarah McCoy, New York Times, USA Today, and internationally bestselling author of Mustique Island
This information about All That Life Can Afford was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Emily Everett is an editor and writer from western Massachusetts. Her short fiction appears in The Kenyon Review, Electric Literature, Tin House, and Mississippi Review. She is a Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellow in Fiction. Everett grew up on a small family dairy farm, studied English and music at Smith College, and studied abroad for a year at University College London. After graduating, she returned to London to do an M.A. in literature at Queen Mary University of London. She lived and worked in the UK from 2009 to 2013. Everett has been managing editor of The Common, a literary magazine based at Amherst College, since 2016. At The Common, she edits fiction, manages print and online production, and hosts the magazine's podcast. All That Life Can Afford is her debut novel.
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